Delibrate
by requestedgems
Summary: Mako and Raleigh vs. movie marathon.


Mako was tired.

She had spent the day cleaning the apartment. All of the various rooms, the bathroom, the kitchen, her bedroom, the spare bedroom, and even the living room and now she plopped on the couch to have a spare minute to cool off.

She wiped the perspiration off of her brow and leaned her neck on the cool leather couch. Breathing a sigh of content, she forced herself up and into the bathroom before she got too comfortable and wouldn't want to get up.

Throwing on a short sleeve top over her tank-top, she took her hair out of the little tiny ponytail she had struggled to put in and shook it out. She gave a light shake, laughed at herself in the mirror and waltzed out to the kitchen.

The morning/early afternoon light was streaming in through the windows and Mako couldn't help but stop and smile at it. It was so peaceful compared to what she and her co-pilot had been through. Constant days of waking up to the siren sounding, loading into a Jaeger and fighting some random Kaiju that decided to throw itself from the breach.

How she loved all this down time.

Raleigh on the other hand didn't.

He was so used to all of the chaos that when the whole Jaeger business stopped, he felt useless. Mako had reassured him multiple times that he wasn't useless and now he could pursue any career he wanted, but he had shook his head. His life was the fighting, but Mako's had been a life of struggle and she wanted to make something of herself.

Mako was now the manager of a very popular book store. Raleigh was an engineer.

Both were very content with their careers, or at least, she thought they were. Mako had always loved to read and was very good about organization, so it's no wonder she had ended up there.

She read in her free time, and that happened to be now. It was Saturday and she had the weekend off, so she picked up the book she happened to be currently reading - _Jackaby_ by William Ritter - and curled up on the couch along with her cold glass of tea.

Just as she had settled into 19th century, her phone buzzed. Sitting up and glancing at the clock, sure enough it was 11:37, around the time Raleigh would call. He had called her around 11:30 every day to let her know that he was on his way for their weekend movie marathon.

Mako answered her phone, the caller I.D. read, _My Jaeger Pilot_. She smiled.

"Hello?" She asked, as if not having just read the caller I.D.

"Mako." Raleigh's rough voice echoed back at her.

"Raleigh? Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm just tired that's all."

"Do you want to stay home? If we miss this marathon it's not a big deal. It's not like we don't do this every Saturday."

"No. I mean - No I'm on my way."

"Okay. Do you want me to run and get anything before you get over here?"

"Just stay there Mako." He chuckled in the phone. She breathed out a sigh of relief. You could practically cut the tension in the air with a knife, but that little laugh meant that he was alright at the least and she could work with that.

"Okay."

"I'll be there in about 10 minutes."

"I'll be waiting here. See you soon." With that, she hung up the phone and went into overdrive. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Raleigh had been in distress, drift compatible or not.

She ran to the kitchen and scooped out his favorite ice cream. Plain vanilla with chocolate drizzle, which represented his personality quite well. He was straight forward and always cut right to the chase but he had his moments were he would lighten up and have a bit of a sweet side. She smiled to herself as she finished putting the drizzle over the ice cream.

For herself, she fixed some vanilla ice cream with some caramel drizzle. She prefered her drizzle a little bit lighter than her counterpart but that was also fitting of their dynamic as she was always the lighter of the two when it came to conflict.

She had just finished putting the bowls on the table in front of the TV when she heard a knock on her door.

She already knew who it was.

Getting into the door in about 4 strides she swung the door and smiled up at his messy hair. He smiled down at her.

"Hey." The words formed at her mouth before even realising what she had said.

"Hey." He breathed out, his features softening.

She opened the door a little wider and let him step in. He still smelt of grease and oil, but today he especially smelled of soap. The kind of soap that reminded you of running through the forest as a kid.

"Oh! I forgot something. I'll be right back. There is ice cream waiting for you on the table."

"What are you getting?"

"Blankets. Hang your coat up." She called back to him as she ran in her bedroom and grabbed the blankets from the closet and brought back one for her and one for him.

When she came back to the living room, he had already inhaled most of his ice cream and was finishing the last bites. She already knew something was up with him, not only by the way he was acting but how hunched his back was and the way his eyes had been drooping when she had seen him.

As if he had detected her inspection of him, he looked over at her and frowned.

"What did you bring two for?"

"I thought we could each have one."

"I don't need one and even if I did we could share, we used to do that all the time."

She laid one of the two blankets over the back of the couch and huddled into the other one as she sat down. Finding the remote she turned to the all day movie streaming channel. Today they had gotten lucky and they were playing the whole Indiana Jones series. Mako loved Indiana and her love for it made Raleigh start to like it even more, she could tell.

"Do you need anything else?" She asked him as softly as possible.

"No. Thank you for the ice cream."

She nodded and tried to focus on the movie as best as she could. However knowing her partner was shaken about something made her worried. She knew he would tell her when he was ready as she did when something was bothering her. So she sat, eyes glued to the screen.

That is until she felt Raleigh scoot closer to her on the couch and lay his head in her lap, turning to get comfortable.

She and Raleigh had slept on each other before. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder and he had fallen asleep on her arm when they had visited the park together. However these had been small little incidents, that neither of them had minded, but this felt different.

Deliberate.

At first she had completely froze, but he had taken her hand and started playing with her fingers.

"Mako."

"Hmm?" She hummed back at him, still flabbergasted that he had done this.

"I'm so tired." He looked up at her and she looked down at him.

"Why are you tired?"

He looked at the ceiling, refusing to meet her gaze.

"Is it your job?" He shook his head.

"Your friends?" He shook his head again.

She looked up and racked her brain for answers. She remembered that right after they had been released from having to defend the world from those monsters that they both had had a hard time sleeping. They were constantly having nightmares, and when one had a nightmare, so did the other.

That had to be it.

"Nightmares again?" His eyes finally locked on hers.

She smiled down at him and began raking her fingers through his golden locks. He closed his eyes and let out a huge sigh. After she had played with his hair for a while, he had taken her hand, held it close to him and fallen asleep.

* * *

They were only three movies in when he awoke again to find that Mako had draped a blanket over him while he was knocked out sleep.

All Raleigh had proceeded to do was sit up, drape the blanket over both of them and wrap his arms around Mako and go back to sleep again.

* * *

Mako had been completely startled by Raleigh's acts of affection he showed today, but she had just written it off as lack of sleep.

However when Raleigh had wrapped his arms around her and hug her close, she felt her heart squeeze in her chest. Mako was no stranger to this feeling, but she have a pretty good poker face, and it had not let her down yet.

This was a whole new level of physical intimacy between the two, but after harboring her feelings for such a long time, she didn't mind and she had continued to sit there and be support for Raleigh as she finished the marathon without him.

Raleigh had woken much later and he had apologized for his behavior and how sleepy he had been. Mako had told him she hadn't minded and that she had a tendency to act like that when she was tired too. He had smiled at her and her stomach flipped again. _Stupid butterflies._

"Thank you for everything Mako."

"You're welcome, but you don't have to leave. You're welcome to stay for as long as you need."

"Really?"

Mako nodded.

* * *

Raleigh had decided to say without much because - unbeknownst to Mako - he enjoyed her company just as much as she enjoyed his, maybe even more.

So Raleigh had taken Mako's hand and lead her down to the spare bedroom and gestured for her to sit.

She gave him a confused look, but she knew exactly why he had done that as he pulled her over to him and put his arms around her. Her back resting against his chest.

He said it was just to be comfortable, but he knew the real reason and he was pretty sure Mako knew too.

* * *

They both had slept very well that afternoon and even well into the evening. More at ease then they had ever been, even though neither of them had voiced it out loud.


End file.
